Pep talk for empaths. Also known as The Tender Introvert Show.

18 events of 2018

Barring a nuclear strike or the long awaited economic meltdown in the two days ahead these were very likely the most important trends and events in 2018.

The so called one percent got even richer, while people even with jobs had more and more trouble to make ends meet. This finally let to new protests like the yellow vests movement in France. The government’s reaction was surprisingly brutal. A clear sign that the elite is really not considering to share any of its wealth to avoid social unrest.

Israel kept terrorizing the Palestinian population and managing the largest prison on earth, the Gaza strip, doing all it can to make life for Palestinians unbearable…

Israel started losing the war for our minds. Public opinion, especially in Europe, started swinging in favor of Palestinians. Israel murderded too many innocent civilians this year, including nurses, journalists and plenty of children. Americans are still being brainwashed by their biased, pro-Israeli media, but even US citizens are starting to spot Israel’s crimes. Images of young, cheerful Palestinians ladies brutally harmed by the Israeli occupation forces damaged the Israeli reputation even further. In the pic above you can see Razan al-Najjar, a nurse murdered by Israel.

Assad managed to stay in power in Syria. Things do not go according to plan for the US and Saudi-Arabia…. It also became even more clear that ISIS was created with the help of the US

The situation of the Kurds has never looked better

The trend to automate jobs continued. On the hand this is brilliant, people should be freed from doing mindless repetitive chores, but on the other hand steady jobs were replaced with temp jobs, freelance jobs, parttime jobs demanding incredible flexibility and the profit of automatisation flowed to the top..

Yemen…. Nobody cared what went on there. Why explain it here? People died, our lives went on.

The US made conflict between Russia and Ukraine stayed relatively peaceful, but it’s also deadlocked

The media demonization of Iran, Russia, Venezuela, China and any other country that might pose a threat to US hegemony continued

Hollywood entertainment kept pacifying us

People addicted to drugs kept being considered trash while people addicted to watching series, their instagram account, wasting energy in the gym, internet, social media, sweets, or anything else to run away from themselves kept being considered normal

Most countries kept being ruled by a moneyed oligarchy, with possible exceptions such as Iceland…

It was definitely a year for construction firms specializing in building and maintaining fences

Investing in arms manufacturers remained a very smart though morally iffy move

There were no major conventional wars, just lots of assymmetrical conflicts

Trump’s massive deregulations on almost all fronts turned the US even more into neoliberal paradise, this means huge profits for the elite and a lot of low paying, precarious jobs for lots of other folks

Angry people kept venting their anger online where it’s harmless and doesn’t change a damn thing. And people stayed blissfully unaware of the motivations behind their own actions. Like just yesterday I saw a guy being aggressive on internet, and after a good look at his Facebook profile it turned out he was lashing out at the world because he felt the world had rejected him. Poor thing didn’t realize he was asking for love by yelling on Facebook…

if you had a great internet connection, lived in Europe, had a fairly ok job, enjoyed watching movies, documentaries, YouTube videos and had little need for fancy stuff you still had a lot of fun and more comfort than the richest Egyptian faraoh.

Here in Slovakia the event of the year was the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak. In its wake the usually politically passive, subservient Slovaks finally took to the streets to protest against corruption. These protests lost momentum before any really fundamental changes took place, but the effects were on the whole more positive than negative.